Fuel pumps for vehicles are used for pumping fuel from a fuel source to a fuel delivery system of an internal combustion engine. Depending on the type of fuel delivery system; carburetor, throttle body injection, port injection, or direct injection, the fuel is delivered under low- or high-pressure. A fuel injection system typically requires fuel to be delivered at higher pressure than that of a carburetor.
Traditional Spark Ignition Direct Injection (SIDI) engines employ a high-pressure fuel pump that is driven by a camshaft used for valve train actuation of the internal combustion engine. It is beneficial to drive the pump with the engine's camshaft or camshaft drive since the pump typically needs to be synchronized with engine timing.
For certain compact engine designs including, for example, engines having pushrod valve train systems, access to the camshaft and space for packaging the pump is limited. Therefore, to mount a high-pressure fuel pump directly operated by the engine camshaft would require a significant redesign of the engine block. Thus, in these situations, a remotely mounted, accessory-driven fuel pump would provide an alternative means to meet the requirements for such applications.
A remotely mounted, accessory-driven fuel pump may also be desirable in applications where modularity between the SIDI and multi-port fuel injection versions of the same engine is desired, or to reduce investment in engine changes to convert to SIDI. No commercially available engines, however, disclose an accessory driven high-pressure fuel pump.